


Brevity

by TheMarvelGirl



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst, Gen, Modern Adaption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 05:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMarvelGirl/pseuds/TheMarvelGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing quite as enticing as a scandal- and with the recent passing of the CEO and new media emperor of Denmark Digital, there is no shortage of those.</p><p>The throne is toppled, and the rightful heir is left seething behind closed doors.</p><p>This is Hamlet's story.</p><p>[A modern take on the original story of Hamlet, as told by William Shakespeare and re-imagined by me.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written as an assignment for my Literature class. My goal was to successfully adapt the play to a modern setting. I took quite a few liberties with the story, and hopefully Shakespeare isn't turning over in his grave at the thought. Enjoy!

## i.

In Hamlet’s dream, his father appears.

The void around him swirls and darkens, the air cools, and Hamlet is forced to stare into the stern, unsmiling face of his father. His beard is silver-streaked, and his grey eyes are as cold as Hamlet feels, and worse yet— they are dead. Empty, devoid of emotion, the very opposite of what Hamlet’s desperate memories depict. He is merely a shell of his former self.

He is dead.

Hamlet tries to speak and tries to move, to no avail. The air is heavy with untouchable disappointment and suddenly he feels hollow. His father’s empty eyes tear right through him. His father’s shell— or ghost? — says nothing and slips away. Hamlet can feel himself resurfacing from the dream, and into the halfway subconscious that leaves him strung in the balance between the two worlds, between the real and unreal.

Unthinking, he stretches his hand out to the other side of the bed, seeking comfort. He opens his eyes only when he grasps at nothing but empty air and a cold sheet. Sitting up, he allows himself to adjust to the blue dawn. A quick glance around his bedroom procures the notice of a folded sheet of paper on his bedside table. In neat, small print:

_I had to leave early. My apologies, but I borrowed your chauffeur. Sleep well. — With love, Ophelia._

Hamlet can still catch her scent lingering on the pillowcase beside him, and momentarily, he is soothed.  
\---

## ii.

He is late to the meeting, of course. The board room has virtually emptied, leaving the chairs around the long, rectangular table askew and various sheets of paper scattered around.

However, _he_ is there. Hamlet outright refuses to acknowledge Claudius as his uncle, let alone— stepfather. His hands shake a little with the injustice of it all, and suddenly his suit jacket feels tighter, and his tie is suffocating him. How could they? How could the entirety of Denmark Digital, how could _his own mother_ , simply forget the man that brought the company to its height, a mere two months after his passing?

Claudius stands in front of the screen at the head of the room, his fingers trailing over the ornate mahogany of the armchair that is pronouncedly at the head of the table. He is speaking to the company’s chief legal officer, Polonius. Hamlet’s mother, dripping with jewels and dressed to fit her role as a simpering rich man’s wife, is tucked at Claudius’s side.

Hamlet is at a loss— because he cannot fathom the words, because he cannot imagine how he is the sole mourner of the death of his father, and because he knows his rightful place is to be at the head of that table. 

“My son has completely tired me out with his constant requests. At last, I had no other option but to begrudgingly allow it. All I ask is for your approval.” Polonius's affected tone in addressing Claudius is reminiscent to Hamlet of that of a servant to his master.

“Polonius, I do agree. Your son should not hesitate to continue his studies in France. He’s young, and his time is his own,” Claudius has a voice that carries over the length of the room, and Hamlet has to physically restrain himself from recoiling in disgust when he is noticed by the newly-appointed chairman. “Ah, my nephew— my son. You’ve arrived at last.”

Hamlet does not deign to reply, and cannot keep his eyes off the chairman’s hand gripping the chair.

Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, forces a smile and clings ever so closer to Claudius’s arm. “Hamlet, darling, you can’t spend forever in this depressed state, looking down all the time. Why torture yourself and remember your father like that? Dying is simply another part of life.”

“This is true, Mother,” Hamlet manages. He runs his hand through his dark hair, trying to compose himself. “Death is common.”

“So why does it seem to affect you so much?”

“Seem? Does it just _seem_ to affect me? Mother, no display of mourning could even begin to capture my true grief. There’s more of that than reaches the surface. You’re only seeing what’s on the outside.” Hamlet’s tight hold over his emotions is slipping, and there are the unspoken words: _you are only_ choosing _to see what is on the outside._

Claudius smoothly interjects at this. “Hamlet, my boy, do not misunderstand. It is, of course, commendable of you to mourn for your father. But at this point, we—” He gestures to himself and Gertrude, “both feel as though it has been long past giving your due respect. You do need to realize that you are the closest in line for management of Denmark Digital, and we must see that you are strong-minded and firm enough to handle that kind of responsibility.”

Hamlet reads the underlying insult and the thinly-veiled threat to his rightful throne easily, and he is seething.

“And we don’t wish for you to go back to university.” Claudius continues, and Hamlet is momentarily derailed by this sudden change in topic. “You should stay and observe the company as my right hand.”

“Yes, he’s right, dear.” Gertrude looks up at Hamlet imploringly. “Don’t go back to Wittenberg. Stay with us.”

Hamlet nods his head slightly. “Yes, Mother, I’ll do as you wish.”

Claudius breaks into a wolfish grin. “So then that’s settled! Sweetheart, send for the chef to dispatch some bottles of German wine— this calls for further celebration.”

Hamlet is out the door and down the hall before the request is even completed, hands trembling. All he can think is that if people were animals, his father would have been a mighty lion and his uncle was a snake— and for a wild, desperate moment he resents God for decreeing death by one’s own hand a sin.  
\---

## iii.

_Click, click._

The tapping of computer keys has been the only sound Hamlet has heard for the past hour. His office is isolated, in a forgotten corner of the expansive buildings of Denmark Digital. He’s got a magnificent view of the city, though. He likes it best at sunset, when the windows are red, the sky is fiery orange, and the streets are still ablaze with people, and he can watch the river bordering the edge of the city mirror the shifting moods of the sky.

Hamlet moves his mouse around the screen, a slight frown etched onto his forehead. He rubs his jaw absentmindedly and stares at the computer on his desk, wondering what he is missing.

_Click, click, click._

It takes another forty minutes before he is forced to admit that he can’t get into any of the company’s accounts. Oh, his own personal bank account is untampered with, and that is what he assumes is the reason he never suspected anything was amiss. All financial information of the company, however, and most of the legal and strategic information as well, has been essentially closed off to him.

In other words, the “work” he’s been given is unimportant, its purpose to keep him complacent and to marginalize his role as heir to the new media empire, and with the Fortinbras Corporation looming over their heads, pushing for a merger...

Hamlet stands up in agitation, harshly loosens his tie, and starts pacing in front of his office’s bay window. He stops suddenly, and slowly lowers his forehead towards the glass pane. It’s winter, and the glass is cold, but Hamlet doesn’t care. He stares absentmindedly out over the streets, and beyond that, to a lone ship balancing on the thin line of the horizon, and inexplicably thinks about his mother.

_How could she, how could she? Women are so weak-willed, selfish, slaves to their own desires._

There is a knock on the door, and Hamlet spins around, tense and wary. He stares in disbelief at the figure standing in the shadow of the doorway.

“Hello, good sir.” A slightly teasing voice calls out.

“Horatio? Is that you?” Hamlet questions, and takes a step towards his old school friend. “Aren’t you supposed to be starting the winter semester? What are you doing so far from Wittenberg?”

“I felt like skipping class.”

“Right, because you’re _not_ the last person I’d peg as a truant. What are you really doing here, Horatio?”

Horatio smiles briefly, and then sobers for his next line. “I came to pay respects to your father— for the funeral.” He raises an eyebrow. “Besides, couldn’t I ask you the same question? Why aren’t you in school?”

Hamlet ignores this. “Don’t even— you mean you came for the wedding,” he spits out.

“Well, it’s true that it came soon after—” Horatio begins quickly, but is interrupted by an agitated Hamlet.

“They saved a lot of money with that. It’s great for the company, I suppose, to not have to pay twice for caterers.” Hamlet takes a steadying breath.

“Your father was a great man, Hamlet,” Horatio speaks softly to his slowly unraveling best friend.

“I still— I think I see him sometimes, Horatio,” Hamlet whispers, running his hand through his hair and avoiding his friend’s eyes.

“Where?”

“It's all in my head.”

His eyes meet Horatio’s briefly, intensely, and the rest of the conversation is unspoken and dissolves into the space between the two men, just like it always does. Hamlet changes his demeanor alarmingly quickly.

“How long are you staying for? Come on, I was just about to head out anyway. Do you want to…”

He ushers Horatio out of his office, down a few hallways, and on their way to the magnificent glass stairwell down to the atrium.  
Standing on the landing, looking over the expanse of busy Denmark Digital employees, Hamlet’s gaze rests on Ophelia, well below him.

It does not escape his notice when she stops and very deliberately turns away when he catches her eye, quickening her pace in the opposite direction.

His brow furrows slightly, but before he can think beyond the moment, Horatio is prodding him along.

Shaken out of his trance, Hamlet turns to him and grins. “Come on Horatio, I need to teach you how to drink before you leave.”  
\---  


## iv.

After it is all over, Horatio will think in bitter retrospect; they never did end up going drinking.

Hamlet visits a new bar alone— some underground place that he’s overheard Ophelia’s brother Laertes mention offhandedly to another person at the office— and orders the first thing that comes to mind. Gin and tonic— top shelf, of course. 

He contemplates the art of drinking in solitude, focuses on the simplicity of adding the alcohol, drop by drop, into his bloodstream, and wonders briefly if it’s some type of blasphemy or if he’s just discarding any half-hearted delusions of the use of drinking as a social tool.

Four seats down from him, an older man is reading a newspaper. The story on the front page is accompanied by a picture of Hamlet with his the palm of his hand shielding his face, walking out of the main building of Denmark Digital. Hamlet can see his mother and Claudius too, out of focus in the background of the shot. He doesn’t need to read the story to know what it’s about. Instinctively, his hand twitches up towards the collar of his coat, as if he could again try to protect himself from prying eyes.

It’s not soon after he sees the picture when he leaves the bar. He can’t afford to be recognized by anyone, least of all the paparazzi. He braces himself for the cold outside. Walking along the streets, he wonders why there aren’t as many people outside as he expected, regardless of the late hour.

He sorely misses the rush of warmth that the alcohol had originally given him.

Hamlet’s still ambling along the deserted street when he pulls out a pack of Marlboro Reds— he’s filched them earlier from Horatio, who swears he’s trying to quit. He lights one up and prepares to take a drag, when the air suddenly cools around him.

He drops the cigarette untouched, and it hisses and dies in the dirty snow.

It is déjà vu and he’s staring into the stern eyes of his dead father— but this time, he is most decidedly _not_ dreaming.  
\---

Hamlet wanders mindlessly, not noticing as the city shifts from somewhat dreary buildings to the affluent apartments and homes of the upper-middle class. He glances up in surprise when he recognizes a building, and stops.

It’s Ophelia’s home— he knows immediately, though he has never been there before.

He looks at the fire escape. He contemplates it.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

\---  
Ophelia runs her hands through her damp blonde hair, wringing out the last few drops of pool water. The entire apartment complex is sleeping, quietly undisturbed. She’s just come back to her room from a swim under the star sprinkled sky, in the communal pool which can only be accessed by the residents of the luxury apartments that she lives in with her father and brother.

Reaching over her bed to grab a blanket to wrap herself in, she wonders briefly what her childhood therapist would say if he knew she still sneaks out at night to go swimming when her mind is full. He’d probably say it was a defense mechanism. Everything she did was either a defensive reflex or her subconscious acting out against her “male-dominated environment,” according to him.

_Well, it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out._

She thinks back to the past couple weeks, back to every look on Hamlet’s face when she forcibly avoided him, and wishes things could be different. Her conversations with both her brother and father had been completely different, but along a common vein; both of which had triggered the urge to bleed out her emotions into chlorinated water.

Before Laertes left for France, he spoke to her first. Ophelia can still picture it in her mind’s eye: still quite a few hours to go before his flight, they go to a coffee shop near the airport; her brother places an order for a caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream (an unmanly drink as any, which he’d _never_ order if he was out with friends as opposed to just his little sister) and she asks for four shots of espresso in her drink (because she _obviously_ doesn’t have enough bitterness in her life without the extra coffee mixed in) — it’s just the way they’ve always been. He starts off with a gentle warning about the fleeting affections of youth (even though he’s not that much older than her), and then moves on more harshly to what a man of Hamlet’s rank would expect from a relationship with a girl like her ( _You’re no more than one of his graphic design interns! Ophelia, get a hold of yourself._ )

He cares about her, he says. He just doesn’t want to see her hurt, and he’s always looking out for his little sister’s best interests, isn’t that true?

And besides that, let’s pretend Hamlet really does care about her— his intentions, as good as they might be, will never matter as much as his filial obligations. He can’t make choices for himself the way normal people can. He’s a slave to his responsibilities. His tender promises only mean as much as his company will allow them to.

_There’s no room in his heart for you._

Her father’s speech is more long-winded and riddled with terms such as “propriety” and “reputation” and “self-restraint” and “innocent girl” and “media empire,” but essentially, it is the same.

She listens to every word, and her eyes grow bruised and dark.

Ophelia gets up from her bed almost instinctively to clear her thoughts. She stands in front of her mirror and starts methodically combing her hair, when she hears a _clang_ outside her window.

She muses that it must be a cat or other animal scavenging for a little midnight snack, but thinks nothing of it until she hears another, louder clang.

Her eyes flicker towards her window, and she bites back a scream of terror. She drops her hairbrush, which mercifully lands on the carpet with a muffled thump.

It’s a phantasm, a mere apparition, it isn’t real— but for some reason, Hamlet is standing on the balcony outside her bedroom window, looking at her.

He’s a mess; the bottoms of his pants are muddy, the buttons of his shirt are undone, and he is pale and generally disheveled. He walks slowly through the open French doors until he is standing just an arm’s length away from her. Ophelia is transfixed by his gaze, too shocked to move.

He crosses the distance between them by grabbing her slender and shivering wrist— hard enough to bruise— and studies her face intensely.

Ice grey eyes meet her own brown gold, and she’s disintegrating.

He doesn’t say a word. 

She can scarcely breathe.

Ophelia doesn’t know how long they stood there like that; it could have been hours or merely seconds. Her mind floats back to a memory, back to the last time they were uninhibitedly happy in each other’s presence — a simple movie night, but Ophelia wouldn’t be able to recite the plot. They had been acting like shy, lovesick teenagers, sneaking glances at each other and laughing in embarrassment if they were caught. He had remembered all her favorite sweets, and set out enough blankets to bury them both in. They had fallen asleep like that, her head on his shoulder, innocently resting by each other’s side. 

She distinctly remembers the taste of caramel popcorn and the way it felt to be adored and it physically hurts— because that was the man she loved and the man standing in front of her couldn’t be any more different. 

_Where are you?_

Hamlet smiles at her in that way he has, as if she’s simultaneously the center of his world and something barely worth his time, and lets out a heaving sigh. He lets her go suddenly and backs towards the doorway, his gaze never wavering from hers.  
She hears the clanging sound again— he’s kicked her metal watering can on his way out, but she can’t decipher whether he did it on purpose this time as well— and it’s loud enough this time.

“Ophelia? Ophelia! Are you all right?” Ophelia hears her father rise from slumber, and she turns around quickly in panic. 

By the time Polonius reaches his daughter’s bedroom, she’s gaping at the spot where Hamlet stood in disbelief, wondering how he could appear and then disappear in matter of the few seconds it took for her to turn around.  
\---

## v.

Wittenberg is a beautiful, immaculate institution in the most conventional kind of way; ivy-covered walls and sun-dappled cobblestones and high-tensioned students that are so wrapped up in skeins of the future that they rarely take a moment to think about where they are in the present.

Horatio gets letters, to remind him.

He gets emails too, but for a person currently pursuing a Master’s degree in mass communication, he seems to be constantly dealing with less dynamic technology, and more with the reversion to the days of ink flourishes on paper. He can’t say that he minds much; he’s always been a little more old-fashioned and romantic than he would like to admit.

Sometimes, however, as he sits under a tree in the common area with a novel and agitatedly checks his phone for messages, he ardently wishes that someone would think to update him more immediately when issues arise.

He puts his phone face down in the grass, determined not to touch it again. _Her_ face, creased with anxiety, flashes through his mind, and that’s enough to disturb him again. Horatio stands up and pulls out his pack of cigarettes.

He says he’s been trying to quit, and it’s the truth; he only smokes when he gets stressed. The problem is that he is breaching his limit all the time now.

When Ophelia sent her first letter a few months back, he had thought nothing of it; but now she had become a source of pure information, a single thread connecting him back to Denmark Digital, and more importantly, to Hamlet. She had been worried out of her mind, she told him. Hamlet is spiraling out of control and has closed everyone off completely, and she had nowhere else to go to but his closest companion. And Horatio learns in time, she has no one to go to for anything else, either.

She weaves him tales of swimming under a star-pricked sky, of returning gifts, tainted memories, two broken hearts and of “I never loved you.”

The letters stop abruptly. The only news Horatio receives is from his newspaper subscriptions and online articles written by enthused “journalists” — the loosest use of the noble term— who circle around the scandal that has twisted itself into one of the world’s most prominent digital media companies, like sharks surround blood in water.

The last few things he hears is enough to make him want to fly by her— _Hamlet’s_ side, and it takes every bit of his logical intuition to overpower his unwavering loyalty to bitingly realize that he is more assistance to Hamlet staying away from the inner-company storm that thunders its way, even all the way to him.

Polonius is dead. Horatio receives the news in disbelief, and even more so when a hysterically sobbing Ophelia wails through the phone about the rumors flying through whispers in the company— the car crash was staged, planned, it wasn’t accident, _it was murder_.

It was Hamlet, they say. Horatio doesn’t want to try to map it out, but his systematic brain refuses to leave it alone. He distinctly remembers a vaguely sketched out plan for revenge, which had nothing to do with Polonius. He is nearly positive that Claudius must have been the intended passenger, and the subsequent manslaughter was unforeseen.

But he doesn’t want to think of his friend— _his brother_ — as capable of murder, even indirectly.

He traces Hamlet’s intent, pieces it together from what he hears from Ophelia, the corporate jargon spun in the business section of newspapers, the gleeful malice of gossip magazines, and even the frantic whispers that make their way as far as where he is— though those he takes with a grain of salt.

The next thing he hears is the crash. It’s complicated, and constructed entirely through corporate loopholes, and graces Claudius with a long enough jail sentence that swiftly prompts Gertrude to disappear somewhere into the lines of the globe, but not before passionately declaring to her son that, in her eyes, they were no longer occupants of the same earth.

It was essentially a second Christmas for reporters everywhere. Horatio felt nauseated.

He doesn’t understand how Hamlet did it, but he has a sneaking suspicion that he used the rabid attention the paparazzi had focused on his dysfunctional family life to his advantage, and that it might have had a lot to do with his obsession with fighting his way into the inner nuances of Denmark Digital’s system. Horatio is not capable enough to understand fully what Hamlet had done- his own area of expertise being public relations- but he can surmise that it was brilliant, enough to destroy Claudius’s name not only throughout the corporate world, but the civilian world as well.

It’s a white collar death in its finest, but it’s a bittersweet victory at most. Horatio has not heard a word of this from the source of the destruction himself, and there is a dreadful pause in his communication with Ophelia that leaves him struggling for breath when he thinks about it too often; he thinks about it more often than not.

He waits. He cannot wait any longer.

It’s on his walk back to his studio apartment, watching smoke trail up from the end of his third cigarette, floating into the air like smoky tendrils of breath on a cold winter day, when he receives a message, finally. It’s not from Ophelia, and it’s not from Hamlet.

One time, Horatio took the time to analyze the subtle differences between Ophelia and her brother. It’s a habit of his, to watch and observe others, and pass silent yet objective judgments; Hamlet teased him good-naturedly for this. Laertes was the kind of man who uses his anger as a weapon, forceful and impulsive to the point of foolishness, while Ophelia bottles hers into a demure, hesitant sorrow—both equally as dangerous, but for different reasons.

As he reads Laertes’s terse message, his heart collapses and then bursts. He feels lightheaded and drowned simultaneously. He is a mess of contradicting feelings, and for the first time in his life he can’t calmly extract and classify and categorize them. Horatio reflects that this must be what undiluted despair is; it is not possible that he could sink any lower. He wants to scream, or weep, or find Hamlet and hit him until he draws blood, but he can do none of these things.

Instead, he takes off in the direction of his studio apartment, his heartbeats pounding out the word _suicide_ , over and over and over again.

 _Suicide, suicide, suicide._  
\---  
Horatio reaches his apartment door and presses the numbers on the keypad lock with shaking fingers. His apartment is essentially one room, large by his standards, but cold and dark. The drapes are drawn tightly, leaving no opportunity for any light to slant through.

A figure is hunched over on the couch, hands interlocked in his lap, seemingly waiting for him.

“Hamlet…” Horatio breathes out. He should be surprised, or angry, or both, but he is numb.

When Hamlet looks up and finally meets his eyes, the tension in the air is so suffocating. Horatio feels he could drown in it.

“Drowned,” Hamlet says at last, as if reading his thoughts. “She drowned in one of those ghastly night swims she used to take. She was a fantastic swimmer, there’s no way it could have been an accident.”

Horatio says nothing, and calmly picks up a plate from his kitchen table. He hurls it at the wall, and watches the glass rain down onto the faded carpet. He can’t stand the way Hamlet refuses to use her name.

“Should Denmark Digital’s newest CEO really be missing at a time like this?” Horatio mutters softly.

“You’ve heard about it.” It’s not a question, merely a statement of fact. “It can wait.”

Horatio strides to the curtains and yanks them open. The sun is a fiery mass hovering on the edge of the flat land, and beams of light skitter across the room. Sure, it can wait. Why not? 

The two boys spend the rest of the evening in contemplative silence— Hamlet with a wineglass, Horatio with a cigarette. Yes, they’ve waited, but time has been cruel; there is no solace to be found in life’s brevity.


End file.
